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88 Ala. 35

Blackshear v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1889

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1889-11-15

<p> Indictment for Murder. </p> <p>1. Charge as to testimony of one witness; ambiguous, argumentative, and misleading. — On a prosecution for murder, the testimony of a witness for the State having been contradicted in several particulars, and leaving room for the inference that he was himself implicated in the commission of the homicide; a charge requested, instructing the jury that, if said witness “fabricated a falsehood in order to shield his own guilt, t.he jury may look to that in explanation of the evidence of the defendant, and they may acquit,” is properly refused, because (1) it is argumentative merely, (2) it is misleading, (3) it gives undue prominence to a single feature of the evidence, and (4) it is ambiguous in meaning.</p>

Cited by 1 later decisions — most recently April 1979

1 state decisions

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-11-15

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SOMERVILLE, J.

¶1The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for life.

¶2One Jenkins testified as a witness for the State, and his testimony was not only contradicted in several particulars, but left room for the inference that he may himself have been implicated in the crime charged.

¶3The only ruling of the court to which exception is taken, is the refusal to give the following charge requested by the *36defendant: “If the witness Jenkins fabricated a falsehood in order to shield his own guilt, the jury may look to that in explanation of the evidence of the defendant, and they may acquit.”

¶4The refusal of this charge was proper, on several grounds: (1) It was argumentative merely, announcing no distinct proposition of law. (2) It was misleading, in the intimation that the defendant might properly be acquitted, if Jenkins’ testimony was fabricated and untrue, without regard to the probative force of the other evidence in the case. (3) It gave undue prominence to a single feature of the evidence. (4) It was ambiguous in meaning.

¶5The record is free from any discoverable error, and the judgment is affirmed.

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